PSA: After doing the expedition, you don't have to complete the missions quests again
I know it sounds dumb, but... The realisation came to me when I had been doing my missions quests for the third time: nobody is asking you to do your missions quests. Yes, they might give you a few useful items (and seven metric fucktons of rubbish, as well), some of them might even come in handy at the start, and yes, you can also get a whopping ONE hullcracker around the end if you invest all the time in it, but...
...You could just loot for the items you want, instead, or do your trials so that you have enough time to get the rank you want by the end of the period. Oh, and about the same amount of useful items (if not more) by getting the trials rewards.
Of course, if you just do it for fun (because you find it fun getting shot in the back while still looting for that fucking flow controller on your 7th Stella run), then enjoy the game the way you want (enjoy it anyway), but if you're like me and those shiny yellow dots distract you enough to lure you into listening to bloody scrap brokers telling you to bring a handful of wires for a noise maker: you don't have to. It's okay. You're not a slave to Celeste or Lance.
I just thought there might be dozens of us who needs to hear this, and I might not have been the only one to just do constant naked Stella runs to not waste resources BUT get a safe pocket. That's when I raised the question: "Why am I doing this to myself, in the first place?"
( P.S.: they should rework these flow controller type missions quests anyway, because it's truly, frustratingly unjust to not get spawned in medical/assembly and then having to try and extract alive only to restart and hope that you spawn in one of those zones. IMHO they should still randomise the location of those items within a certain zone BUT make them personal/unique, the same way they do with logs and books and shit, so that other players can't prevent you from completing the mission quest by simply getting there first. The same has happened with the Rocket Assembly battery charging mission quest, already - I don't see why they haven't done the same here with the two Stella item missions quests.)
Do you mean quests? I've never completed them fully, which I feel is a downside of expeditions. Since the introduction of matchmaking pools, there's no danger from the players because I don't attack anymore, so the most interesting part would be the quests, but I end up not doing most of them because I know they will be reset after the next expedition. I end up having to grind through the trials, projects and events, which are much more repetitive and offer no story elements.
Haha, yeah, I mean quests, thanks. I keep confusing all these things from creds to coins to merits.
Since the introduction of matchmaking pools, there’s no danger from the players because I don’t attack anymore
How do you do it? I've been doing the same for literal months, and I got killed/attacked by players at least 3 times last week. 2 times out of those there was someone else to kindly knock them for me - I don't even shoot back, just stand there and play the guitar (and say howdy) as they keep shooting me like some sociopath orcs. And still, raider flashes are going up left and right, and the threat is constantly there.
And I get this by being cautious as heck, so I didn't even add the cases where I probably avoided a possible PvP player (like quickly moving around on a lower floor while someone else who never says hello back or says anything just follows my footsteps, running, to everywhere a floor above, thinking I'm there).
And yeah, the quests should either be gone entirely after completing once, or they should do something about the repetitiveness.
The stats screen for my last expedition showed my play time for the period as 35 hours, with 0 players downed or knocked out. I play on PC and I would shoot back only if shot at. I remember fewer than 5 games where there was someone shooting people. I managed to stay away or escape from most, but got killed once or twice.
I'm not sure why our experiences are so different. For my first hours in the game, before the introduction of aggression-based matchmaking, I did a lot of PvP, killing people left and right. Since then though, I tried not to attack first and quickly noticed that everybody is peaceful as well, so I aligned with that because I'd have a harder time completing trials and other tasks otherwise.
I guess it might be just a different zone, since you even shoot back: I used to do that, and that spiraled me into a blood bath in the long run, because apparently shooting back still counts as aggression. All my (intentional) PvP damage last week was a single hatchet hit at one of the guys that shot me in the back and got knocked by a friendly bystander. Otherwise I just followed his bleeding ass everywhere, playing the guitar and spamming howdy.
I needed to hear this lol. Thanks OP.